Touch You
by Kanna-Ophelia
Summary: Sequel to "Leaving Home." Enid wonders if she has ruined her friendship with Elizabeth forever. * femmeslash * *second chapter now up *
1. need

_AN- This is a direct sequel to Leaving Home. Enid is left picking up the pieces after she tried to seduce her best friend. It forms part of a vague continuity with my Jessica/Lila and Jeffrey/Tom stories. If that summary didn't indicate it fully enough, this is femmeslash. If the idea that two girls can love each other, or, for that matter, two boys, causes you serious problems, you'd be better off looking for a Liz/Todd website._

_For my beloved Floria._

Monday morning, and everything at Sweet Valley High was back to normal. It felt like an obscenity. Something should have changed, something should have acknowledged the fact that I had touched heaven, and my life had been ripped apart as a consequence.

I dressed mechanically, with no idea of what I was wearing, and headed to school. It was hard to care about little details like whether my shoes matched my dress when all that mattered in the world was that, unable to bear the fact that my best friend was going to Switzerland and I would never seen her again, I'd finally… done what I had always dreamed of doing.

Only now, Elizabeth wasn't going to Switzerland. And everyone, absolutely everyone in Sweet Valley, was happy.

Her trampy sister might think she is the most popular girl in the school, but Jessica has nothing on her own twin when it comes to the crunch. Dear Jess has trampled on, dumped and pissed off too many people in her career, while Liz is everyone's best friend. I knew I was just one among many, when it came right down to it. My most special quality was that I didn't have much else to do with my time than wait on Liz's good graces.

Unfair… I knew I was being unfair even as I thought it. One of the reasons I loved Elizabeth was that she really does care about everyone. When she lies or is hypocritical, it's usually out of a desire not to hurt anyone, not her sister's ruthlessness. And she had always cared about me… It was no one's fault but my own if I had thrown it away.

And my efforts to harden my heart against her were in vain, anyway. For all I tried to prepare myself to be bitter and defiant, I couldn't help the stab through the heart as I saw her slender form at the base of the steps. Better to have her hate me always, I thought wildly, than lose her to the other side of the world. If it would hurt every time I saw her, at least it was better than never seeing her at all.

I was dimly aware I was standing in the car park, shaking, my books dropped at my feet. Terrified by the thought of going near my best friend.

I couldn't have reached her through the crowds if I'd wanted to. She was lost among her well-wishers. Those friends who truly loved her and the sycophantic creeps who basked in the reflected Wakefield glory were indistinguishable among the hordes. Or maybe not so indistinguishable at all... Penny and Olivia, after all, didn't have the confidence and pushiness to make their way to Golden Elizabeth's side. They hung back wistfully, while it was the sycophants who had their arms wrapped around her.

Lila, for example, was just so happy to have Liz around for good, she needed to air kiss her in front of everyone. Who cares if she secretly wishes Elizabeth would be hit by a car, so she could comfort the other twin in her arms. (Chastely, of course, heaven forefend I hint at anything more...) It's all good publicity, darling. And the twins cast light on anyone who comes into their orbit.

And as for me? I didn't even attempt to come near the centre of her bright tornado. After all, I was only her best friend. And for a few moments, something more... but I wouldn't think about that. Not anymore than I could help, anyway. And it was time I accepted that I probably wasn't even her friend anymore, after having taken advantage of her like that.

It's always been my place, after all, I told myself, to wait in the background, in the shadow of Elizabeth's glory... I wanted to wallow in self-pity, even I couldn't help but realise I sounded like a whiny bitch. /Cut it out, Enid, or even you won't respect yourself/ I chastised myself. /Pick up your books and WALK./ Maybe, I wished helplessly, there was some chance I was wrong, that Elizabeth would greet me not with confused horror but with love.

Before I could make myself move, Jeffrey arrived, and the rest of Elizabeth's admirers stood aside at last. As they should. After all, the Boyfriend had arrived. His arm wound possessively around her slim shoulders, and she leaned her head on his shoulder for a moment. It was completely uncalculated, the kind of caressing gesture she makes naturally and without thought to how seductive she looks. Watching, I wanted her to do that to me... The two of them looked so beautiful together, meant, blonde heads shining side by side, bronzed joyful faces, the perfect golden couple in a way Liz and Todd never really were. As, I realised dully, Liz and I could never be.

/Oh, you've made the right choice, sweet Elizabeth/ I told her silently. / A dyke couple is never going to be the toast of the school, now, are we? And we both know what it's like to have everyone turn against you because of a rumour... Only, those about me were true while, of course, for you they were only cruel lies. Naturally. Ditch the jock soccer star for the lesbian school nerd, and it won't be long before they no longer see you as such an...

Angel./

A ray of sun caught the hair above her forehead and spilled golden lights across your heart-shaped face, making a mockery of my pathetic attempts to be bitter.

/Goddess, I love you/ I told her silently. Why hadn't I been able to tell her that even as she was coming under my fingers? After all, it was my fate to adore her, everyone knew that. I'd loved her ever since sexy little Jessica Wakefield took advantage of my crush on her by bringing me home to "help" her study. Frustrated by Jessica's laziness, I'd looked up to see, laughing sympathetically down at me, the same perfect face with an entirely different soul. From that moment, I had been lost.

It would have been easier to let her go to Switzerland, thinking I was stealing Jeffrey from her. Much easier, I berated myself.

But I knew why I had done what I did. Because she looked so hurt, and so beautiful, and I couldn't bear the one girl who had ever truly cared about me suspecting me of betraying her with her own boyfriend. I couldn't endure it if she left, and never came back, never knowing how I felt. So I kissed her, and by some miracle, she kissed back.

I wondered if Elizabeth hated me, now her sanity had returned. If that is why she and Jeffrey were half-walking, half-hugging towards class. Or maybe was just that he had won.

Would she let him kiss her like I did, press his lips to her breast, touch her and learn your cries? I know I was the first... I know it, darling. No one can take that from me... Even if when he says he loves you, you say it back./

I wanted to run after her, wanted to touch her hand, beg her to come back to me, make her yell at me, if only to see her lips shape my name again... But I was so terrified of her rejection, dreading her disgust, scared most of all of seeing compassion in those ocean eyes and hearing her advise to me to talk to someone at Project fucking Youth about my sexual identity problems. Oh, my best friend has always shared the great American belief in support groups and psychobabble solving all problems... Sweet, brilliant, naive Elizabeth, with her gentle faith that anything can be solved by simply talking it over. Infuriating girl.

I knew that talking this over wouldn't change a thing. But, oh, I needed to talk anyway, so desperately... Almost as desperately as I needed other things.

I didn't even realise my feet were bringing me to Ms. Dalton's classroom until I was hovering in the door. I always used to come to Ms. Dalton when I had problems. When no one would talk to me, first because I was too bad, and then because I was too goody-goody, and finally because my worlds collided... A boring drug-abusing slutty nerd, only I could manage that particular balance of bad reputations. Clever Enid.

"Yes, Enid?" It's her precious non-contact period, but Ms. Dalton doesn't betray any irritation. "Are you okay, honey? Come sit here and talk..."

So I sat, and talked. Sort of. Let my worries spill out, anyway... "Ms. Dalton... what would you do if you thought you were in love with someone, a good friend, and they already had a b- a girlfriend, and you - kissed - them."

I clamped down on the sudden sweet flood of memories of more than just innocent kissing. Of Liz's mouth, open wide and hungry against mine, the taste of her skin, the sounds she made in the back of that arched tanned throat when I touched her through her bathing suit. I couldn't tell Ms. Dalton about that... Beautiful, so beautiful, my memories, and I couldn't commit the blasphemy of letting my favourite teacher be shocked by them. Whether or not Liz hated me, she gave me those moments to love her, and I knew it would be unforgivable to desecrate her gift like that.

"I think they hate me now. I wish I was dead," I ended abruptly.

My favourite teacher looks levelly at me a long moment, then said, carefully, "Did she kiss you back?"

Oh dear. Ms. Dalton must have noticed I had a crush on her, rather than the more usual thing on Mr. Collins... And then when I came to her with this incoherent mess… well, she's no bimbo, even if she did date Lila's father,

"Yes, she kissed me back," I whispered, not looking at Ms. Dalton, feeling tears prick at my eyes. And remembering the sweet hot kisses Liz had given me... Elizabeth loved me in that moment, surely. All those double dates, trading lukewarm kisses with Todd or Jeffrey's friends up at Miller's Point, while she and her steady of the moment kissed and cuddled, and all those discussions about sex and romance at sleepovers, carefully censoring my own thoughts… Well, all in all I'd had enough second knowledge of Liz's kissing style to swear she never kissed a boy like that. Maybe it was because that Ms. Dalton didn't seem horrified that I had kissed a girl, but I felt hope beginning to breathe a little inside me.

Ms. Dalton shifted closer. "Then maybe..." She reached out as if to stroke my hair soothingly, before she remembered that teachers aren't allowed to touch their students, and snapped her hand back. I wished she had forgotten. The gesture was so maternal, and I couldn't talk to Mom about this, not yet. But I still wanted to be someone's little girl, to have the hurt in my heart taken away like a scraped knee. I wanted to be six years old again, and have Daddy still love Mommy and live at home, and not have awful memories that none of my friends have to deal with, and not be in danger of becoming the school dyke.

"Maybe she's feeling very confused too, right now," Ms. Dalton said softly. "Especially if she's never realised she can be attracted to girls before."

"Maybe." I barely dared look at the thought, that maybe Elizabeth was just scared and waiting for me to make the first move. After all, I had behaved terribly myself, joking about our encounter afterwards as if it had meant nothing to me. I don't even know where the words had come from. I had just been so terrified, suddenly, of what I had done… Maybe she was feeling as uncertain as I was.

But I'd seen her with Jeffrey.

"Talk to her," Ms. Dalton advised. "I thought we'd agreed that running away doesn't solve anything."

But I knew running away was all I wanted to do. Except that it would mean never seeing Liz again.

"I'm sorry," I gasped, and I really was running, away from Ms. Dalton, away from the school, away from Liz.

Who followed me, somehow, so that even when I was lying on my bed, all I could see was aqua eyes, no matter how much I scrunched up my own.

I might as well face it. I would never be free of Elizabeth Wakefield.


	2. touch

~I was intending to make this a separate fic, but decided to extend this one instead. Enjoy.~  
  
~for my beloved~  
  
I curled on my side, staring into darkness. The more you try not to replay painful scenes in your head, the more they repeat, over and over, until you feel like you will go insane, your sanity killed by multiple wounds., I had thought my bedroom, warm and dark, would be a refuge, but all it did was leave me alone with my thoughts.  
  
I knew I should get up and go do something to distract myself, but depression kept me immobile and helpless. I hated myself, hated my life, hated Jeffrey French, even hated Ms. Dalton. The only person I couldn't really hate was Elizabeth, no matter how much the dark corner of my heart thought she deserved it.  
  
I heard the door creak open and felt rather than saw light fall across me. I squeezed my eyelids tight, hoping Mom would take the hint and go away, knowing she wouldn't. I'd fled to my room too many times before, and come down drunk or drugged, for her to let me be alone this time.  
  
It was just another thing to hate myself for, all the grief I had put my own mother through. I would never do that again, never destroy myself no matter how much things hurt, and she trusted me, but I couldn't blame her for worrying. She loved me, and I loved her.  
  
Still, I couldn't bear to talk to her about this. It was too personal, too raw.  
  
The person standing at the door cleared her throat at last. "Enid?"  
  
Not my mother. A young voice, light and bell-like. Hers. I would recognise it if I was in my grave and she spoke above me. Infatuation works like that.  
  
"Enid, your mother said you were sick." Elizabeth sounded worried, but only lightly, as if I had forgotten my homework or something. Of course, she would die over something like that. "And I know you're not asleep, so you might as well stop pretending," she added, more sharply. "We need to talk."  
  
Liz always needed to talk, I reflected bitterly. She didn't understand that some things should just be let alone, not made worse by post-mortem. I didn't look forward to having my most intimate feelings nicely slit open and pulled out to see what went wrong.  
  
I had to say something.  
  
"Mom shouldn't have let you up here." My voice sounded harsh from tears, almost a stranger's voice.  
  
"She was worried about you," Liz said, reproachfully. It figured - my mother adored Liz. She couldn't have been more different from my old friends, after all. Well-behaved, smart and popular - just like I was now, except for the popularity, of course. A golden girl. What she had always wanted for a daughter herself. And as for me, I was too infatuated to even resent it. I stared at the darkness behind my eyelids, where the red lights flashed.  
  
"Enid, please talk to me...I'm your best friend, aren't I?"  
  
"Still?" I couldn't take it anymore. I had to see her.  
  
I couldn't quite make out her features, with the light from the hallway behind her, illuminating that silky blonde hair like a halo and making those big blue eyes of hers look like pooled shadows. She was wearing one of her favourite dresses, white broidery anglaise with little pearl buttons running up to its high neck, the kind of prim, unfashionable outfit her twin wouldn't be seen dead in.  
  
It made her look like an angel dropped straight out of heaven.  
  
"I'm still your best friend. If you want me to be," Elizabeth amended softly. She stepped into the room without invitation, pulling it closed behind her. There was a moment of blissful darkness, and then my bedside lamp clicked on, as Liz took a seat on the edge of my bed, looking down at me. "Why were you avoiding me?"  
  
"You were with Jeffrey." I didn't want to look at her. She was too beautiful, her expression too sweet and sympathetic, everything I had lost too damn close. I watched my hands instead, clenching and unclenching on the bedspread. "I understood."  
  
"What exactly did you understand?" There was a note in her voice I didn't recognise.  
  
"That I'd ruined everything. Please go away -" I choked down on a treacherous sob.  
  
She was quiet for a moment, but she didn't leave. "Enid, why did you run out on me Saturday? You did - that - with me, and walked out without a backwards glance, and then never came near me again. You -" She drew in her breath, shudderingly. "Was it because you thought I'd go to Switzerland and you'd never have to face me again?"  
  
That did it. I burst into tears. I tried to say something, stammer some apology and make everything alright again, but I couldn't catch my breath. The sobs stuck in my chest, hurting, but the pain was almost a relief.  
  
The next thing I knew, I'd been pulled up to lie in Elizabeth's arms, nestled against her like she was my mother, one arm cradling me close while her other hand stroked my hair. "It's okay, honey. I understand."  
  
"You do?" I managed, looking up at her.  
  
"I was terrified too." She crushed me close, and I hung on for dear life, hoping that this really was the miracle and I wasn't misunderstanding. "I couldn't ring you. I went over and over in my head, all the different conversations we could have, and I didn't know what to say. You walked off and left me, Enid. Don't do that again. ever." She sounded close to tears herself. I couldn't bear that I had hurt her like that.  
  
"I was scared." I didn't know what else to say.  
  
"I know, baby." She kissed the top of my head, and something inside me melted, permanently. All I could do was cling tight. "Me too."  
  
After a while, she sighed and straightened up. "I broke up with Jeffrey."  
  
"Why?" I hoped it meant what I thought it did, but I was still waiting for this to be snatched away.  
  
"Why do you think?" Her arms tightened around me. "I told him I was in love with someone else."  
  
My heart was singing in my ears. But there was still guilt, just a little. Jeffrey was my friend. We'd spent the last two weeks making a memory-book of Sweet Valley for Elizabeth, together. And then, unthinkably, I'd stolen her from him. And I'd die rather than give her back, so I guessed I would just have to get used to having stolen her. "How's he feeling?" I asked tentatively.  
  
"He's a little upset." He voice was as tight as her grip on me. Elizabeth never liked dealing with unpleasant things, and she could guilt-trip herself worse than even I could. Not that she didn't do exactly what she wants almost as often as Jessica - she just agonised endlessly about it, while Jessica was born with an irrecoverably impaired conscience.  
  
"I'm sorry." I said, not knowing how far I meant it.  
  
"You're so sweet, Enid." She buried her face in my shoulder. She smelled pure and old-fashioned, like rose-scented soap. "I love you," she whispered.  
  
I'd never thought to hear it from Elizabeth, not in that way. She'd told me she loved me often enough before, but in such blindingly obvious platonic affection that it had hurt almost as much as it had made me happy. But now, being held in the darkness, with her lips against the crook of my neck. It was hard to realise my heart was still beating.  
  
"I love you too. So much, Liz, always."  
  
"I should have realised," she whispered. And then we were kissing, her mouth even sweeter than I had remembered, silky and wet and loving. Mine. My Elizabeth. For a dizzy moment, I thought I would die.  
  
"Move over," she said, when I reluctantly gave in to the need to breathe, and she settled on the bed next to me, our arms around each other's waists. Those beautiful blue-green eyes held mine, very soft and luminous in the half-light.  
  
"I never would lie on the same bed as one of my boyfriends," she said eventually, sounding rather self-conscious. "It always seemed to be promising too much. But I slept with you on so many sleepovers, and never thought anything about it."  
  
"Because it doesn't count with a girl?"  
  
"Because I trust you."  
  
"Oh," I said dully, wondering what that meant. That our time in the pool would be the only one? I didn't care, I told myself. I would be honourable and chaste, if that was what she demanded of me. To be allowed to hold and love and kiss her, that was everything. I didn't need anything more, not yet.  
  
"And I love you, Enid." She kissed me again, harder this time, lips pressing against mine, short fierce kisses, over and over, until I was breathless.  
  
"Hey, Enid?" she said at last.  
  
Much as I loved her, sometimes I wished Liz didn't need to discuss absolutely everything. But I would do whatever she wanted. "Mmm?" I forgot my resolutions of chastity, and kissed her throat. She responded as she had only two days ago, gasping and flinging her head back.  
  
"Darling. darling, stop a moment."  
  
I was happy enough to hear her call me darling that even surrendering that soft tanned skin was possible. "Yes, sweetheart?"  
  
"You're the sweetheart." Her eyes melted, and for a moment I thought she was going to forget talk and kiss me again. But her nature won out, and her lips pressed together firmly for a second. "Enid, do you think." She was very flushed, and not just because I'd been kissing her neck, I thought. "Saturday, do you think." She looked away suddenly. "Do you think I'm still a virgin?"  
  
I tried not to gape at her. I knew I'd been the first to touch her intimately, I suspected I'd been the first even to really kiss her, but I hadn't thought of it in quite those terms. Counting bases was something for boys. And it would, I realised with a cold plunge of my stomach, be very very important to Elizabeth. She was that kind of girl. I would have been, too, given a different past.  
  
"I don't know," I said, honestly.  
  
She caressed the side of my face. "I like the idea that you were my first. Perhaps, we should make sure of it?" She was trying to keep her voice light, but it shook.  
  
I could think of literally nothing to say to that, so I kissed her instead.  
  
~tbc~ 


End file.
